Internet circa early 2000s

[kachuu]

I've gone into a huge nostalgia moment with how the internet used to be circa early 2000s. I'm talking, Neopets, Lissa Explains, Geocities, Xanga, etc.

Bright colored pages- About me, fun, faq (because people actually asked you questions so many times you needed this ), LiveJournal, cliques, webrings, etc., noone used their full names, "Cutie Factory"...

 

But what was the one website where you could post an ad to be host or look for "hostees" on your website? Does anyone remember this? It's driving me crazy I can't think of it....

What was your favorite old website? Dancing Hamster? Geocities?

 

**i'm not sure if this belongs somewhere else, if so- i apologize for being lazy & not looking first!

[catlady]

i didn't do much on the internet back then, but i remember that my group of friends turned away from MySpace around the time when those damn sparkle backgrounds became a thing and most profiles looked like the interior of a middle-school girl's locker.

[keen23]

I totally had a Neopets account. As of six months ago, I was still able to log into it... It's so dead now.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, catlady said:

i didn't do much on the internet back then, but i remember that my group of friends turned away from MySpace around the time when those damn sparkle backgrounds became a thing and most profiles looked like the interior of a middle-school girl's locker.

Plus you had to log in every time you visited the site whereas FB would save your login info.  It was much easier to use FB over MySpace.  

Before FB there was classmates.  I still have my account but haven't done much with it lately. 

Edited March 6, 2019 by 47of74

[Dreadcrumbs]

I remember that by time I chose to create a MySpace account everyone was moving over to Facebook. ?

[47of74]

On 3/8/2019 at 9:33 AM, Dreadcrumbs said:

I remember that by time I chose to create a MySpace account everyone was moving over to Facebook. ?

If I remember right I joined MySpace in 2007 and by then it was just at the point of passing its peak.  A number of people that I knew were on MuSpace.  Facebook was just starting to warm up then and I had created an account in 2008 but still considered MySpace as my primary social media haunt.  My siblings were over on FB by then and having it remember logins meant I started to use that site more and more often.  FB did a better job with photos and some other features. 

I actually kept my MySpace account quite a while too but didn't use it very much after summer 2008.  I think it was 2010 when I finally deleted the account. 

I've been on Twitter now since July 2008 and have about 73,000 tweets. 

My first internet connection at home was a 14.4k modem.  Going up to a 33.6k and then to a 54.2k felt like real speed bumps.  Now we have a 100mb connection and could go all the way up to 1gb if we felt like paying for that much.

[potato]

I may or may not still have an active Neopets account (which is turning 15 years old in a week or two).

[47of74]

And MySpace lost a big chunk of data and hardly anyone noticed.

Quote

The wonky, pre-Facebook, customizable web page-based social network Myspace has lost all the music uploaded to the platform between 2003 and 2015, totaling more than 50 million songs from 14 million artists, which the company confirmed only after some participants in a technology-focused subreddit pointed it out.

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace,” the company said in a statement. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

 

[Dreadcrumbs]

@47of74 I'm surprised stuff was being uploaded to Myspace as recently as 2015.

[nokidsmom]

OMG, yes the Dancing Hamsters!

Also, from the dark ages of the internets:  Netscape Navigator and AOL instant messenger.

Also the earlier message boards I was lurking on circa 1998 were in list formats, no graphics or anything, just text.  Around 2000 they went to the board hosting format we see today.  

We were stuck with dial-up until 2004 because IIRC the ISPs were fighting over which company would take over our area.  By then, websites were becoming really, really slow so it was great to get the broadband.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by nokidsmom

[47of74]

On 3/21/2019 at 4:56 PM, nokidsmom said:

OMG, yes the Dancing Hamsters!

Also, from the dark ages of the internets:  Netscape Navigator and AOL instant messenger.

Also the earlier message boards I was lurking on circa 1998 were in list formats, no graphics or anything, just text.  Around 2000 they went to the board hosting format we see today.  

We were stuck with dial-up until 2004 because IIRC the ISPs were fighting over which company would take over our area.  By then, websites were becoming really, really slow so it was great to get the broadband.

Well if one uses Firefox that's a descendant of Netscape Navigator.  It's been my primary browser for years now, regardless of whether I'm using a Mac, PC, or Linux.  I think it's better than Internet Exploder / Edge and it's usually way ahead on features of what Micro$oft has.  For my school stuff I primarily use Chrome because when I started school they used blackboard and it wasn't supported on Firefox.  School switched to Canvas but I still mainly use Chrome for school stuff, kind of helps to keep stuff separate.  If I have to sign on to the work systems I use Safari because it seems to handle the work stuff the best since I'm on a Mac and don't have Internet Exploder.

Out in the country we were stuck on dial up for years.  We went from dial up to satellite when it first became available.  It was faster but had a 12gb monthly data cap which I kept bumping in to all the time.  When the wireless towers became available we switched to that, and that was about three times as fast.  We just graduated to fiber last year. 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Netscape Navigator

You just gave me a flashback.